Overview
Michael J. Anthony has been developing as a songwriter for over twenty years. His quest has taken him from Glasgow, Scotland to the Golden State of California. Michael has had five Soundclick #1 hits. He tests his unique brand of folkie introspection and wry humour on local unsuspecting open mic crowds and measures his success on how many people get up and order coffee during his sets; the answer is not many.

On the art of songwriting, Michael is upbeat and expansive. "It's the most liberating form of expression I know. Everyone has important songs in their lives. Ever since I was a kid I wanted stake my claim in this wonderful cultural lexicon."

Influences
Michael got his first musical instrument, a toy keyboard, when he was four. When he was fifteen, Paul Simon songs like "Slip Slidin' Away" and "American Tune" were washing through his head, "And it seemed like the perfect way to reach people, the way these songs reached me."

"All my songs have an emotional anchor point, even the ones that are totally silly. People connect with them. They'll take you somewhere. Songwriting is my first love without any doubt. I enjoy the craft, the ruminating over word choice, audience expectation and even audience attention levels. I think songwriting can learn a lot from moviemaking both in terms of its systematic approach and also time expended: you get ten writers working on a screenplay at once which at the very least produces something polished. If a solitary songwriter working alone wants to compete with that level of quality, in the sense he has to do the work of more than one person. My tendency to write dozens of drafts some have called perfectionism. I can only answer that the final drafts are better than the first drafts. It's an evolutionary process, like oil painting. You can't get to the finished product without going through the intermediary stages."